Spike Spin-Off/ Episode Two
by PedanticAnticQueen
Summary: The Internationally Ignored/ Acclaimed Spike Spin-off is back and CHAPTER 5 is up. Spike remains dashingly morally ambiguous, new characters, plethora of plot. Rating raised to R, for bad language and mature themes.
1. It's back

Disclaimer: Spike, Buffy and all of ME's characters belong to Joss Whedon. The other ones, or the Anti- Scoobies are all mine mine mine.  
  
Author's note: Sorry this is really late. I was so busy until last Friday, when I finished my last exam. Then I was gonna type it out today but I nearly got hypothermia. Also, I rediscovered the pleasures of recreational reading, in the form of a certain H.P. Lovecraft and my own idol, Neil Gaiman. Those writers are the gods of their genres. But hey on the bright side, I was finally able to find my own personal writing philosophy during the break. Albeit, it is one pilfered from Immanuel Kant but it still epitomizes what I believe an artist should do- "Seek not the favor of the multitude; it is seldom got by honest and lawful means. But seek the testimony of the few."   
  
Summary: A lot of stuff happened in Episode 1- go read it. You cannot possibly understand this story without the background check, and I'm not guaranteeing that you'll understand it with the background check. This deviates in tone from the first fic, due to experimentation and the inhalation of pentel pen at the time of writing. (Note that I do not condone the act of pentel pen sniffing since it is one of the major contributors to social degeneracy, right up there with white-out snorting. Really. I blame the badfic epidemic on office-supply abusers.)  
  
************  
  
There aren't very many things one can do when one spends all of one's time tied up in a chair.  
  
For one, the limited mobility makes it nearly impossible to do anything. With hands tied to one's sides, it's not as if one can even spend the livelong day perusing one's palms if one is esoterically inclined.  
  
Yet in the face of the bleakest ennui the human mind is quite capable of adapting to even the most dull of circumstances.  
  
Darcy read a book once about a man in a Siberian concentration camp who spent nearly all his time fixating on cigarettes as a way to make his living conditions more bearable. Unfortunately she doesn't have any access to cigarettes and she thinks that he had it lucky compared to her.  
  
She used to fantasize about winning the Best Actress award and making the customary acceptance speech when she was a child but now the fantasy seems so gauche. She tried to substitute the situation with the Nobel Prize, but somehow the suspension of disbelief does not go over well enough for the fantasy to carry out.   
  
Eventually she finds herself caressing a callus on her middle finger, situated between the top and the middle phalange, almost as a reflex or a nervous tic. The rough patch of skin was beginning to smoothen out now from disuse, aching for the touch and friction of a pen.   
  
She remembers the days when her entire hand throbbed and cramped from too much writing, accompanied by the black smudges which smeared the lunar and Venusian mounts of her hand. Days when she would ignore the physical discomfort, galvanized by a fanatical dedication to what would materialize on the page.  
  
It didn't matter what she wrote. Just the act of putting ink on paper was enough of a thrill for her- the act of creation.   
  
Sometimes she would write out her notes as a form of revision for the big exam. Other times she would simply write a word again and again, fixating on it and wondering how such a strange looking thing could be so common to her. (Like the word 'thing' or the word 'the' for instance- fairly innocuous on the surface but teeming with ambiguity below)  
  
Sometimes she would write her name out endlessly, adding curlicues and curves to embellish what she thought was a travesty of a moniker.   
  
Darcy.   
  
It's another addition to the long list of reasons to resent her mother, an English professor who was of the persuasion that Jane Austen was some sort of feminist and one who sought to perpetuate her literary tastes by bestowing the name on her firstborn.  
  
Darcy loathed 'Pride and Prejudice'.   
  
She also loathed lots of books that made in into print, and often voiced her opinions about the degeneration of the medium with cynical barbs characteristic of those who had shitty childhoods. Shakespeare was 'overrated'. Dickens was 'a righteous twat with too much fondness for parables'. Hardy was 'a fatalist who didn't know jack about women'.   
  
It was only fitting that when she was briefly institutionalized, the only books she could find on the shelves were Austen, Hardy, Dickens and Shakespeare.   
  
That was the deciding point at which she snapped, and began to question the insidious designs of whoever created the universe. There was simply too much symmetry in life to wring as much agony out of you as humanly possible.   
  
It was never the big things that belied life's cruelty. It was the overdues and the lost receipts, the extra ten pounds you gained, the perpetual disarray of a vigilantly cleaned apartment or the contents of a library in a mental institution that really tipped you over the edge.   
  
But there are definitely benefits to be reaped from the loss of sanity and illusions (after all, were they not the same thing?). There is no freedom sweeter than that of having nothing left to lose.   
  
Which was probably why she could sit calmly in a chair, contemplating the state of a callus while being held by someone who was not only a homicidal maniac but also a fashion victim nonpareil.   
  
He was planning something now, making calls and endlessly writing out diagrams and schemes on beautiful sheets of Oslo. He was thankfully quiet but this only increased her anxiety, knowing that this was far from over.  
  
Sometimes he forgot that she was even alive, and that pissed her off. So she would yell, and scream and make a racket like clockwork or an alarm. Five o'clock, feeding time. Five thirty, bathroom. Seven twenty, time for her shower. She thinks she knows what infants and invalids feel like and she resolves to repent her formerly insensitive ways. Never again will she park in the handicapped zone, if she makes it out of this mess alive.   
  
Finally on the sixth day of lamenting the state of her callus, she finally makes a demand.  
  
"Hey you, blond boy. Gimme a pen and some paper." 


	2. From the Diaries of Darcy Milne, Part I

Author's note: Darcy's POV will play a large part in this episode, in the form of these journal entries. (Experimentation, experimentation.) Also, the rating will be upped to R because the language is getting filthy, and it deals with mature themes like drug use.  
  
**********   
  
From the Diaries of Darcy Milne (alternatively known as the 'prostitution of the soul through print')  
  
Entry 1  
  
I don't know what day it is today. I don't even know what the time is. I'm guessing that it's morning or afternoon because I can see a small sliver of light through a crack in the boards. I'm also getting a 'morning vibe', which means I'm cranky, irritable and completely unproductive at the moment. I always trust in the circadian rhythms.   
  
I remember when Dr. Eisenbaum would tell me to keep a journal as part of my therapy back at the funny farm. All of us had to sit down and write what we did for the day, and express our emotions and all of that crap. They told us that all emotions stem from combinations of either Mad, Sad, Glad or Afraid.  
  
It sort of simplified everything and made it that much more presentable. Then you had to draw a little face at the end with either the mouth curved into a smile, downcurved to express melancholia, or the brows knit together and slanted to indicate anger. I don't remember what face characterized 'Afraid', since I hardly ever drew that.  
  
I guess it's easier to believe that there are primary emotions rather than indulge in the complexity of it all. I wonder what potent combination of all four constitutes the feeling you get when you're jonesing for your meds or when you lose all autonomy, and the mobility of certain limbs. I'm pretty damn sure there is no way you can account for those feelings with Mad, Sad, Glad and Afraid.  
  
However, one thing I am Glad about is that my bastard of a kidnapper gave me a pen and paper today. I have been Mad enough to contemplate gouging his eyes out with this bic and I am sure that it will make him very Sad if I do that. (Mwhhahahahaha!) I am also Afraid that if I poke his eyes out, he will probably seek some retribution in the form of bodily harm, smelly socks or no bathroom breaks, which will make me Sad. Oh, to hell with writing like this.  
  
I'm thinking about tearing this paper into little notes that I can use as SOS signals. Maybe to slip under the door or out the window where some passerby can pick them up. Maybe I can even pin the notes on myself, in case the bastard ever takes me out. It will read 'Help, I have been kidnapped by this here fella in the black leather. Please call the cops and have them bust his sorry ass.'   
  
I'm going to start writing them now…  
  
***  
  
Entry 2  
  
Brilliant plan of writing SOS notes foiled by semi-incompetent captor. It seems that in my enthusiasm for putting the plan into action yesterday I was a bit overzealous about spreading the notes around. One of them happened to lodge its way into the peroxide-laden locks of heathen hellspawn though god only knows what infernal device made that possible. (I mean, it's not as if I put it in his tub of Dep.)   
  
After much impassioned head-bobbing during the airing of some stupid soap, the note fluttered like confetti and ended up floating on the surface of whatever he was guzzling at the moment.   
  
There was a lot of shouting and threats and hand-wringing and pacing. I don't think that he took too kindly to being depicted as a 'leather-clad child molesting sodomite', but then I had to embellish his grievances in the notes. Who can blame me for having creative license? I was pretty desperate at the time. It's not as if anybody else got to read it.   
  
He ranted on and on about how he was helping me and how it was an imposition on HIS life and how I should be grateful that he was doing this out of the kindness of his heart and that's when I pretty much lost it and did some screaming of my own.  
  
Where does that prick get off on thinking that I should be grateful for this? He force-feeds me animal carcasses when he knows I'm a vegan. He purposely waits until his insipid show is over before taking me on a bathroom break, just as my bladder is about to burst. He ignores me all the time- doesn't even bother acknowledging my existence. When he does talk to me it's always condescending and as if I'm some sort of dog who just shat on the carpet. Can he blame me for wanting to get out? I had a life. It wasn't particularly good, but it was a life all the same. He can't just abduct me and force me to play along with his stupid little game of pretend where he's the noble one saving a damsel in distress. That asshole IS my distress. And he shouldn't take that self-righteous tone because whatever it is he's doing to me, he's getting paid for it. I'm not stupid. I saw the money.  
  
I gave him a piece of my mind, and it pissed him off even more. I could have sworn that for a second… I don't know if this a symptom of anti-depressant withdrawal, but his face sort of morphed into this… I can't really describe it. It reminded me of an acid-trip I had back in high school, when my friends and I would try to morph our faces into something demonic by concentrating really hard and playing with the light and shadows. It was sort of bumpy and ridged, but it was only for a split second.   
  
Anyway, it's not as if this is the first time I've gotten LSD flashbacks. But still, it's been a while since I dropped anything other than prescription pills. And the funny thing was, he noticed it too. I guess he must have seen the look on my face or something, because this stunned expression came over his face and he just stalked out of the room.  
  
He didn't take my pen or my paper, so I guess that's a good thing. It's not much, but it's still a source of some comfort. And you can't have too many of those.   
  
TBC 


	3. From the Diaries of Darcy Milne, Part II

Author's Notes: This fic is dedicated to Shadowz, Deanne, prophecy_gurl, Echoes of the Mind and anybody who ever wrote me a review or expressed encouragement. You guys rock.  
  
************  
  
From the Diaries of Darcy Milne Part II (alternatively known as the 'ravings of a maladjusted woman on the verge')   
  
Entry 7  
  
Things have gotten a bit better around here. Ever since that incident almost a week ago, the bastard is starting to be a little nicer. Sometimes he lets me pick the show on TV and he'll watch it with me. I think he's starting warm up to 'Lonely Planet' but I'm not too sure how he feels about the sitcoms. I think the laugh track gets on his nerves. However, he puts up with it. He also asks me if there's anything in particular I want from the grocery store and he buys it, even though he gets grossed out by the seaweed crackers and the wasabi chips.  
  
Yesterday he told me that I could read anything I wanted from his bookshelf. A quick perusal of the titles shows that he does have some taste, even though it's quite eclectic.  
He's got Brett Easton Ellis's 'American Psycho', G.K. Chesterton's 'The Man Who Was Thursday', Aldous Huxley's 'Brave New World', some Irvine Welsh, Palahniuk, Rushdie, Proust and J.T. Leroy's 'Sarah'. Then there are the old tomes that he says I can't touch because they're valuable first editions of some sort, and besides they're mostly in Latin which I can't read because I spent most of Latin class staring at the hunky guy, Keith Leighton, who sat in front of me (I heard from Solen that he was married to his perfect Stepford wife girlfriend now, and they're both raising children somewhere in the suburbs. How cute. Blech.)   
  
Actually the guy has stacks and stacks of books- in the bedroom, on the coffee table, and even in the kitchen. He's even got some Anais Nin and 'The Story of O', but he doesn't strike me as the erotica reading type.  
  
I asked him if the smut belonged to a girlfriend of his and he muttered something about how she liked to be read bedtime stories.   
  
I'm assuming that he did have a girlfriend because he's got quite a bit of little knickknacks and stuff that have a feminine touch. Plus, he has a constant supply of these lacy vintage dresses and he doesn't exactly strike me as a part-time tranny. There are traces of this mystery woman all over him- she's like some sort of spectre that's haunting the place, leaving her imprint and her aura around everything. Maybe she's dead and that's why he doesn't want to talk about it. But her presence is definitely felt.  
  
It reminds me of a story I once read where some guy kept all of his dead wife's things in order, as if one day she was going to come back and use them again. I'm getting the same tragic vibe here, but I'm not too sure I want to pry into it.  
  
He watches me whenever I'm writing and I know he's curious about my journals. He tries to look over my shoulder at them or steals a few glances here and there when he thinks I don't notice. I finally got fed up and called him on it. I held up the sheaf of papers and said "Here, read it. Just stop trying to be covert and read the damn thing." To my surprise he just put his hands up and refused. I know that he still wants to read it, but I have a feeling that he won't. It'd be a violation of this little pact we have going, between abductee and abductor. (How bizarre is that.)  
  
This morning I sort of felt… Um… You know. That time of the month come on. And for some reason I felt really shy about asking him to buy me some Tampax- I mean, I've never asked any of my boyfriends to do that for me. Some things are just a bit too personal and private.   
  
Weird thing was that a couple of minutes after I got my period he got his coat, left, and came back fifteen minutes later with a variety pack of tampons and some pads. I didn't even have to ask him to do it for me- he just knew. It was really awkward but I said thanks anyway and he just grunted and lit up a cigarette. I think that means 'you're welcome' in Spike-speak.  
  
That's another strange thing about him.   
  
Whenever I listen to his phone calls, there are times when he speaks in an entirely different language. I know a bit of rudimentary linguistics but the sounds that come out of his mouth… They're not exactly typical of any language I know. There are about 75 phonemes in the entirety of human speech, give or take a couple. But I highly doubt that the sounds he makes can be classified as speech. Sometimes it's just a lot of growling and barking, and other times it's clicking noises. I highly doubt that he's talking to San bushmen in the Kalahari via cell phone (when did they go digital?) but who else could he possibly be communicating with?   
  
I'm getting a feeling that I'm missing something here, but I'm not too sure what it is.   
  
Ah. Hand cramp. Must stop writing now.  
  
Entry 10  
  
I'm on a break right now, since the slave driving son of a bitch has had me cleaning up the place all day. He left for a while and came back again with this huge crate of something that he put in the closet. The he untied me and handed me a mop, a broom and some cleanser and told me to make the place absolutely sparkling clean. When I asked him why he was being such a prick he told me that we had guests for the evening and that I had to make the place look more presentable.  
  
Stupid patriarchal, chauvinistic asshole!!! After over fifty years of progress for women the world over I'm back in a kitchen, washing glasses and plates and mopping up a man's mess. My mother would be sooo pissed about this. He's setting up a poker table right now, fixing up cards and the booze but every once in a while he yells out "How's it going over there…" or "Hurry up, chop chop!" until I felt like pulling a Lorena Bobbit and just chopping something of his off, pacifist tendencies be damned.   
  
There's some sort of strange coagulated tomato juice or whatever at the bottom of some of those mugs, and boy do they reek! It's disgusting how I have to scrape off the stuff at the bottom since it's all cakey. They have that dead fish smell of something rotting- yuck. This is probably karma for all of those times I bailed out on housekeeping duty with Solen.   
  
I wonder what she's doing now. Things weren't really so good between us before she left for France, but I still miss her a lot. She was just the rock of Gibraltar, always so steady and always helping me out through everything. Everybody needs somebody who understands. I worry about her though, coz her craziness isn't on the outside like mine, but it's on the inside all bottled up. There was never a more discreet confidante in the world, but the scary thing about her was that she could really keep secrets even from me. She's supposed to be coming back soon- if I estimate correctly, her semester should be over.   
  
Shite. She's going to kill me for not picking up the dry cleaning and paying the rent. But hey, I was KIDNAPPED.   
  
Damn. I have been discovered by the merciless bleach head once more. Gotta go back to the grind and grime. Crap.  
  
****  
  
Well it's party time right now and if I thought that Spike was a freak, it was obviously because I hadn't seen his friends who epitomize the word. I have never seen such weird looking people with so many deformities in my entire life.  
  
I think that they're carnies or something. They must be.  
  
Behold, the Man with Too Much Skin! And right beside him is the Man with Three Eyes! And to their left, ladies and gentlemen, is Someone (something?) Who Has Blue Skin and Horns like a Ram atop his head! Feast your eyes on the freaks, folks.  
  
The Man with Too Much Skin seems like a nice guy and he was going to shake my hand until some signal from Spike made him decide against it. Spike told me that I wasn't allowed to talk to them but I could stay in the room as long as I was quiet. Then he let me loose for while, saying that I shouldn't try anything because all four of them would hunt me down if I got any ideas.   
  
As if I could plot a daring escape after having to do all that manual labor. This is bordering on exploitation, I tell you. So I sat on the couch and started to read 'Sarah' until I realized that what was going on was a lot more interesting than the book. I'm writing all of this stuff down for the sake of posterity since I doubt I'll ever see anything like this again for as long as I live.  
  
Spike went over to the closet and took out that crate that he brought in earlier and I found out that inside were all of these kittens. Inhuman bastard! The poor things must have been starved. It's weird that I didn't hear any mewing… He must have soundproofed the closet.   
  
Anyway, he started to take out two kittens and put them in the middle of the table, and all of these other guys took out their own kittens and somehow I don't remember my college games of poker being played that way. I mean, I was pretty much too stoned to notice but I'm quite sure we didn't use little kitties.   
  
The guy with the third eye kept giving me strange looks and whispering something to Spike. I couldn't hear what they were saying and I'm sure I wouldn't understand it anyway, but both of them were staring at me and it gave me the creeps. The thing with Blue Skin looked at me as well and he joined in on the conversation they were having. The one with the Loose Skin was just oblivious to them, drinking his beer and grinning like an idiot.   
  
It reminded me too much of high school, when all of those bitchy cliques would sit around and criticize people. I don't like being appraised like a piece of meat. I bade them goodnight and turned in early, just to get away from the scrutiny.  
  
I'd rather sit alone in my room than put up with that, and besides I'm pretty tired.  
  
TBC 


	4. Talk

Author's note: This chapter is for trailchick, who wrote me a very nice review and was clamoring for a longer chapter. I hope I delivered. ?  
  
************  
Everything changes with the passage of time.   
  
This is a fact of life that most mortals are familiar with, due to the transitory nature of their brief existences here on Earth. Everywhere in one's environment, one can observe that nothing ever stays the same. Change is inevitable and is ironically the only thing that remains constant; hence a good deal of the difficulties in life come from reconciling the way things are with the way things formerly were.  
  
One would think that after witnessing so many changes, immortals and demons with unusually long life-spans should be jaded by now. Yet paradoxically, this is untrue. It is harder to get rid of one's preconceptions and misconceptions if they have held true for centuries, if not millennia. One could even say that these immortals became fixed in their thoughts as well as in their habits, gradually petrifying because of their ever-increasing intolerance for ambiguity. But no one not even immortals, are immune to surprises, and the passage of time only serves to emphasize that fact.  
  
Demon culture is radically different from human culture because it still operates on the arcane rules of social interaction. It has existed for millions of years long before the first humans ever walked the Earth and it provided the seeds for the civilization of mankind, no matter how vehemently puritanically-minded humans and knowledgeable antiquarians may deny it. There is great significance given to personal bonds like friendship or blood relations because of the way their lives are still shaped by tradition and instability. One cannot survive alone in Hell.   
  
Alliances are constantly formed and preserved because of the unceasing warfare. Every single demon is highly desirous of power and conscious about their position in the hierarchy. Even the lowliest, the most self-effacing and the most harmless-looking demons are looking for a way to get ahead. (Yes, even Clem.)   
  
Because everyone is a potential ally and a potential enemy, the rules that govern social interaction among the minions of Hell created a demand for a currency that would hold true despite any changes in the power structures. They needed a way to cultivate loyalty in demons (a rare trait indeed) and one that would ensure that every kind gesture or act of vengeance would be returned in kind.  
  
They were called favors.  
  
This web of reciprocal obligations formed the basis for solidarity among demons. No favor is ever unpaid, unless one wants to suffer ostracism and become a pariah. Needless to say that no one ever wanted to be known as a pariah, since it made one an easy target. In a game of chess, the fear of retribution is what protects certain pieces from getting wiped clean off the board. Demon politics operated along a similar principle- a head for an eye and a leg for a tooth.  
  
This is why there were always wars and blood feuds in Hell, since every act of violence was avenged and led to only more violence to perpetuate the vicious cycle.   
  
But enough about Hell and all of its infernal machinations.   
  
We were talking about Spike, next to whom all other topics seem dull and secondary.  
  
The previous digression from our protagonist may seem unforgivable and completely gratuitous, but it actually had a purpose. It provided the background information necessary for one to understand exactly why Spike had called this particular game of kitten poker.  
  
All the other players at the table were indebted to Spike in one way or another, with the exception of Clem (aptly christened 'Loose Skinned Man' by Darcy in her journal) who was there simply because Spike liked his company and he was never one to turn down a good game of poker, followed by a feast of felines.   
  
On Spike's left sat Misha, who was the half demon, half human who was indebted to Spike because of the time he saved his life back in 1912 in the Rue St. Germain. Misha was the one christened 'the Man with Three Eyes' by Darcy, although his third eye was imperceptible for normal humans and demons. Misha was also the unwitting sponsor of Darcy's current internment since he was the one who gave the GBH to Spike, with the encouragement "Guaranteed to work on any woman!"  
  
On Spike's right sat Jh'tygn, a Ni'tyani demon from the Eascherren dimension who was also indebted to Spike because of a financial transaction that had gone wrong. Because Jh'tygn's brother was not able to provide the services that Spike had paid for (namely, the killing of a Slayer back in the late 1970's), Jh'tygn had incurred the debt and had to pay it in his brother's place. He was doubly indebted to Spike because the latter had indirectly avenged his brother's death by killing the Slayer who caused it. By the process of elimination, one can deduce that he was the one who had blue skin and a handsome set of horns that curved like a ram's on top of his head.  
  
Spike had spent weeks planning this little get-together, since he fully intended to use the resources available to him in order to get his chip out. He had waited patiently for his schemes to come to fruition, which was highly uncharacteristic of him when one considers his tendency to act on impulse. However, when it came to important matters, Spike discovered that he was more than willing to wait.  
  
As soon as Darcy had left the room they resumed their discussion in English, since Spike was more than just a little rusty at speaking Eascheran and besides it was quite rude to speak a foreign language in front of Clem who was only fluent in the local patois.   
  
"She can see me." Misha said, as soon as he heard the telltale closing of a door. "That girl, she looked right at my third eye."  
  
"Of course she didn't. You're just being paranoid." Clem dismissed, taking a swig of his beer.  
  
"No. That girl was looking right at it. Direct eye contact." Misha was getting sort of worried. He was always highly strung, as a result of an unnatural love of coffee (caffeine was an illegal drug in his dimension, so he never passed up a good cup of coffee) and just because he had a nervous disposition.   
  
"Would you stop that? You always get like this. It's always like 'man, I'm getting a bad feeling about this bourgeoisie, aristocracy and peasant thing, especially that Robespierre guy. Let's get out of France'. Or if you're not ragging on the French, it's like 'Man, this thing with the Germans and the Japanese… That Hitler dude is whacked. There's gonna be some crazy shit going down. Bad vibes, bad vibes.' Can't you just relax? It's always about 'bad vibes' with you!" Jh'tygn said, sick of Misha's paranoia.  
  
"I can't help it! I'm psychic. And by the way, I do not and I will never speak like that. I don't talk like something out of a Bill and Ted's Adventure, unlike some other people at this table." Misha complained.   
  
The funny thing was, he really was psychic. And just like all other true psychics and persons of prescient vision in history, no one ever believed him. This usually worked to his advantage when it came to gambling and card games like this one, but it was a real bitch whenever he had something important to prophesize about.   
  
He didn't object to keeping human pets or companions around, but he couldn't help but feel that there was something slightly off about this situation with Spike. For one, he thought it was in extremely bad taste to keep a human that you intended to eat as a roommate. Another was that he was certain that the girl could see his third eye when no ordinary humans or even other demons could see it. The only other people he had ever met to whom it was visible to were the members of his Support Group for psychics afflicted with the 'Cassandra Complex', Drusilla and the Erythracean Oracle Ka'yeh. Very odd indeed.   
  
He tried to concentrate on the game, but it really wasn't any fun if you already knew all the cards of the other members. And besides, his wife would kill him if he brought home any more kittens to adopt. A good fraction of his winnings at the casinos were paying for milk, kibble and cat litter.   
  
'Ah, to hell with it', he thought. He flung his cards on the table. "Spike, I want out of the game. I have to talk to you."   
  
Spike looked up from his cards at the tone of Misha's voice, the very same one he used when he was about to impart some really good advice or when he was about to yammer on about some far-flung 'vision' that was completely irrelevant. Either way, Spike was grateful for the diversion. His cards sucked.  
  
"Yeah? What about?" He said, cocking an eyebrow up in inquiry.  
  
"That girl- the one that was just here. Where did you find her?"   
  
Immediately Spike was on the defensive. He didn't trust anyone, especially hybrids. But he was also curious about what it was that Misha noticed about Darcy. He decided to bite.  
  
"Oh, at some bar." Well, he wasn't really lying, now was he? It was simply a matter of tactful exclusion is all. No need to rile up anybody's feathers by mentioning the Slayer.   
  
"I just took her home and I realized that I could do with a bit of domestic service around here is all. Why, what did you see?" Spike kept his tone casual and affected an air of extreme nonchalance, all the while thinking that he was such a smooth operator and a master thespian. Smart too. (A narcissist was what he was. But then again, he was just overcompensating, so all is forgiven.)  
  
"Well, it's not really a matter of what I saw but it's more of a matter of what she saw. In order to see my third eye she would have to be either a Gi'turi and human half-breed like me, but you can count that possibility out because she doesn't seem to have a third eye of her own. Another possibility is that she's a complete nutter like Dru but she strikes me as somewhat lucid and sane. The third and most likely one is that she's something completely different."  
  
He thought about his next question, deciding how to pose it in a way that would be inoffensive to Spike. Then he thought, screw it, you only live for two millennia anyway. Might as well live on the edge. So he came right out and asked him.  
  
"Spike, did you kidnap her from the Order of Eythrace or from the Order of Apollo?"   
  
All activity in the room stopped and a tense silence filled the air. Jh'tygn dropped his cards and his jaw, and even oblivious Clem looked up in interest. All eyes turned to Spike, who merely blinked and said "Excuse me?"  
  
"You heard me, Spike. Did you kidnap her from the any of the two Orders?"  
  
Spike thought about it long and hard. He had known about the cults that had survived throughout the ages, worshipping older gods of Olympian pantheons past. They presided over the realm of the arcane knowledge and they were the instigators and inventors of many esoteric practices that carried over from pagan times. They also trained and selected young women who showed prescient potential for induction into their order as future Oracles. He had even met Ka'yeh, the current Oracle of Erythrace in a party at Henry Miller's flat many years ago. But he highly doubted that this had anything to do with the Order of Oracles, especially since the candidates were usually chosen before puberty, while Darcy was already 21.   
  
"No. I didn't take her from any of the Orders. She's just some girl. Maybe you're just being paranoid and she didn't actually see anything." He took some kittens out of his crate and raised the stakes to three kittens. He really didn't like where this talk was going so he decided to change the subject.  
  
"Have you checked on those neuroscientists I was talking about?" Spike asked, hoping divert flow of the conversation away from ancient Orders and Darcy. Besides, the reason for this meeting was to find out what information they had gathered about this chip.   
  
"Yes. Apparently one of them, Filche is working at the Gestalt Institute in Germany. He's in the middle of some research work but he should be back in a month or two. Another one, Eisenbaum, just died recently- the obituary was on the New York Times about a week ago. Posh funeral. Juster is retired somewhere in New England and Norton is teaching at a private college in Boston." Misha replied, having spent the past three weeks making personal visits select members of the roster of the American Psychological Association.   
  
When Spike first started his investigations he deduced that at least a few members of the APA were consulted by the government when they designed the chip, specifically those working within the behavioral and neuroscience perspectives. Sure enough, after giving Misha some money to bribe the clerks at the filing office, he was able to find the names of which the neuroscientists that Walsh and the Initiative contracted. There were four names- Juster, Norton, Eisenbaum and Filche, and the idea was to discover if one of them was the 'specialist' that Wolfram and Hart had offered to send him to.  
  
This directly tied to another trail that Spike was pursuing concerning the chip's manufacturers. He was able to obtain some copies of government files that pertained to the companies they subcontracted. The problem was that it wasn't really a matter of which companies were contracted by the government, but rather which companies weren't. However, he was sure that the psychological consultant for the chip would know about who built it. If he couldn't get the damn thing surgically removed, then he would go to the manufacturer and find a loophole or a method of disarming it.   
  
In the meantime he had also assigned Jh'tygn to look for other methods of chipectomy by asking around the demon world. Since Spike had attained the status of pariah amongst his own kind and other demons, his mobility was often limited to shrinking social circles. Hence Jh'tygn served as his eyes and ears about what was happening.   
  
"Which of them have immediate family or anybody we could get to them through?" Spike asked, taking out a cigarette from his pack of Marlboros. "You know- small children, wives and lovers… That sort of thing. Easy collateral."   
  
"Well, Eisenbaum was the one who had children, but he's dead and useless. Filche is a bachelor and some say, the biggest creampuff this side of Bob Liberace. Juster is married and has two grown sons while Norton just got divorced from his second wife, no kids." Misha said, flipping through a dossier that he produced from his bag.  
  
"Hey, can you guys keep it down? We're trying to play a game here", said Clem, who (along with Jh'tygn) had apparently regained his interest in poker even after all the talk of Oracles and whatnot this evening.  
  
Spike sighed and decided to retire his hand. He turned to Jh'tygn and after a brief inquiry about what he found out about the chip, he encouraged him to keep looking. He motioned to Misha to follow him to the couch where they could have a private talk without disturbing the poker enthusiasts.  
  
"What are you thinking?" asked Misha, as soon as he joined Spike on the couch.  
  
"Well, I was wondering about which doctor you thought was the one that was working under Wolfram and Hart." Spike said, his brow furrowed.   
  
"Filche seems to be a pretty clean guy- his interest is mainly research, so I doubt that he would sully his hands with the Wolfram folk. Juster retired because of arthritis, so I doubt the old fogey can even hold a scalpel. I think that the most likely bet is Norton, since I doubt he's getting paid very highly at that private school teaching job. Plus he's got alimony payments to make for his bitca of a second wife. You should see this broad- fake nails, fuchsia pink outfits, poodles- she's a real piece of work. Bet she's sleeping with her trainer or-"  
  
"Don't get so carried away. What about Eisenbaum?" Spike asked, rubbing his forehead.  
  
"It could have been Eisenbaum but tough luck, he's dead."   
  
They sat there in silence, contemplating the futility of their task.   
  
"What do your psychic vibes tell you about this?" Spike inquired, thinking privately that Misha's supposed prescience never did anybody any good.   
  
"Sorry boss. Not really getting anything on this one. I can only tell what's about to happen- I can't tell about the past. Besides, these things are pretty erratic. People just can't summon them up at will and I don't have any crystal balls or that voodoo hoodoo."   
  
"Right."   
  
Spike leaned his head back on the couch exhausted from all of these weeks of planning and taking care of Darcy. He was under a lot of stress lately and he wasn't getting any help from the Slayer or those so-called white hats.   
  
The past few days had been a flurry of preparation, of phone calls and inquiries that had finally culminated in a meeting comparing notes. If Darcy wasn't around he could do all of this investigation himself, but he was hampered by her presence.   
  
However, he had to concede that if he didn't have her there, he also wouldn't have one more thing to barter with- the money. Plus, he could always hand her over to the folks at Wolfram and Hart in case all of his current endeavors ended in failure.   
  
Suddenly, he became very curious about what it was that Misha sensed in Darcy. It might actually shed some light on why Buffy had asked him to protect her and why the firm was so desperate to have her.   
  
He turned to his companion.   
  
"Hey, are you positive that she saw your third eye?"  
  
Misha met his gaze full on. "One hundred percent sure."  
  
"How did you know?"  
  
"Gut feeling. You know… I'm psychic." Misha shrugged.  
  
Spike thought about it for a while.  
  
"Dru could do this thing where she would go into somebody's head to find out if they were telling the truth or to see if there was anything that made them tick." He said slowly, not sure if the half-breed would be amenable to doing what he was suggesting.   
  
"Are you saying that I should do a mind probe?"   
  
Spike looked away from the intense stare that he was suddenly on the receiving end of.   
  
"Maybe. Possibly."  
  
Then after a beat, he amended.  
  
"Definitely."  
  
TBC 


	5. Nickelodeon

Chapter 5  
  
"I have a theory about coins. Did I ever tell you about this, William? It came to me during the Great Depression. One of the most brilliant ideas I ever came up with. In fact, it's so good that I'm sure somebody else thought about it before I did."  
  
Oh no. It was another one of those times that Misha felt it necessary to impart some useless ill-founded conspiracy theory on Spike. Dammit, he hated spending time in this guy's company more than he absolutely had to. Spike mentally berated himself for the millionth time in the span of a century for ever saving his life. Of all the people he could have picked to be in his indentured service, he couldn't have chosen someone who was more often off-tangent. Ah, but he had to be polite.  
  
"No. Why don't you tell me all about it."  
  
The tone with which he said this was sarcastic, but it was completely lost on his companion. It was one of those things that demons never got the hang of- sarcasm, that is. And irony too.  
  
The party had already broken up when Clem and Jh'tygn bade their adieus, arms filled to bursting with kittens. It wasn't a particularly bad loss for Spike, considering he had no intentions of keeping any kittens for himself anyway. As for Misha, he was quite content to keep the kittens he brought- ten gorgeous Siamese that were bred from his own personal stock. He could never bear the thought of anybody munching on his kitties so he always took care to win them back in each game without accruing anymore little mouths to feed. It was quite a skill, really.  
  
As soon as the others had left Spike and Misha set up watch on Darcy in her bedroom, sitting on the floor and waiting for her sleep cycle to reach the REM stage. Misha couldn't do a mind probe on the girl when she wasn't dreaming, since there would nothing to probe before the point of 'paradoxical sleep'. So they both waited for the time when she would be most receptive, making pointless conversation and reminiscing. For Spike, it was worse than pulling teeth by using doorknobs and string.  
  
"Well, you see it goes something like this. Humans don't like coins. There's some sort of social stigma about them, like you can only use coins to pay for little things, like gum and candy. The only mortals who use them on a regular basis are panhandlers and bums. Everybody's got at least several hundred dollars in coins that they don't use. It's idle money, sitting around at home, never put into circulation, because people are too snobby to want to be seen as bums. And every couple of years, they change the coins so that the money becomes completely worthless."  
  
Misha paused to take a sip of his beer and then began again, in the annoying and vaguely patronizing tone of an academic who was giving a lecture. Jackass.  
  
"Now, I figured that someone, somewhere figured this out. The government and the head honchos. So they decided to make coins in increasing denominations. First in quarters, then in half-dollars and finally in dollars. Pretty soon they're gonna make them in two dollar denominations and whatnot. Just like they did in France. And you now what that means? More money that stays idle and becomes obsolete. Now, where does that money go? Somebody's gotta be capitalizing on this and it's those Freemason bastards." Misha then knocked back another swig of beer to prove his point.  
  
Talking to Misha reminded Spike of something E.M. Forster once wrote about a particular Hindi, which was that any conversation you engaged in with him would always culminate in the discussion of a cow. For Misha, whether you were talking about the weather, trends in fashion or the Royal family, no matter how many evasive digressions and gambits you threw out it turned out the same and ultimately you would end up talking about Freemasons.  
  
Whenever any of the half-breed's ramblings started to make any sense to Spike, he knew that he had crossed a certain threshold of inebriation, from which the return would be fraught with painful hangovers. He remembers a conversation they had in Paris while smoking some really good Black Bombay, after which Spike was completely convinced that Freemasons were planning to take over the world. He remembers that it vaguely had something to do with phallic architecture and the Eiffel tower, but the content of the conversation was completely negligible. The effect on him, however, was not.  
  
He went on a killing rampage as soon as he got back to England, murdering all of the Freemasons in his local chapter until in the middle of disarticulating a member he realized to his horror that they were made up of tweed and wool over flesh and bone just like other benign folk who joined rotary clubs or town councils. It was the first time in his unlife that he ever felt anything closely resembling guilt, and it was then that he vowed never to listen to Misha again.  
  
He realized that there was nothing more dangerous in this world than a false prophet and it was then that he first undertook the necessary steps to insulate his beliefs from all outside contamination or proselytizing. Which led to the creation of Spike Saying #1: better to think for yourself than have somebody else do it for you. He was really proud of that- proud enough to preach it from a pulpit.  
  
In any case, it was from his talks with Misha over the years that he had developed the art of pretending to listen. That particular skill did him a lot of good when he was with Buffy. That woman was a whinging bitch. Always complaining about this or that. 'My life sucks. I'm the Slayer.' 'I was better off dead.' 'I want to go back to Heaven.' Blah blah blah. Whine whine whine. Bitch bitch bitch. God, he missed her. Best not think about that.  
  
So good was he at the head bobbing and the occasionally expressed 'yeah, oh really, that's interesting' that it took him a while to realize that Misha was actually saying something of importance. He shook himself out of his self-imposed daze.  
  
"Come on, Spike. I think the girl's ready." Misha said, checking his watch and indicating the bed.  
  
They set their beer bottles down quietly, and stealthily walked to where Darcy was lying down.  
  
She looked really peaceful in her sleep, almost as if she was another person completely. Her forehead was smooth and her face was wiped clear of all expression, free of all of her emotional baggage and post-teenage angst. For a moment, Spike felt a little worried about what they are going to attempt.  
  
"You're not going to hurt her, are you? I mean, she's not going to have an episode or anything crazy like that?" Spike asked.  
  
"No." Misha looked at him as if he'd gone insane. "This is a standard procedure. You just get into their heads while they're dreaming and rifle through what's in there. Memories, issues and all that stuff. It's even a lot easier this way, since you don't have to sift through all of the ego and superego's bullshit. It's a hotline to the pure and unadulterated stuff, straight to the latent content. The person doesn't really feel anything, just thinks that they had another dream in the morning and forgets about it within a couple of minutes of waking up."  
  
Darcy stirred and they both froze, thinking that it seemed so utterly indecent and inappropriate for them to be here while she slept. When she finally settled down, they both breathed a sigh of relief at not being caught in such a compromising position and the hybrid proceeded with his task.  
  
He rubbed his hands together, as if he was trying to generate some warmth through the friction. Then he laid two fingers on each of her temples and closed his eyes.  
  
He was completely still for a second.  
  
Then there became a slightly perceptible change in the way he held his body- some rigidity, as if he was bracing himself for something.  
  
He was muttering something to himself as if there was some reel projecting flickering images on the canvas of his closed eyelids, occasionally laughing softly or saying something like "that's cute" or "Uh-oh", a running commentary on what he and only he could see. It was a singular experience that shut out anyone else in close proximity, like playing pinball or watching a compressed film in a nickelodeon; like peering through those binoculars that charged a quarter a peep. Spike got the uneasy feeling that Misha was getting off on this, and he realized that this is why he never really took a liking to the fellow. Something twitchy and hungry behind the eyes, and the pleasure he seemed to take from such a violation of the psyche. Spike could finally articulate why he didn't trust him.  
  
He made a show of tapping his foot on the ground, fiddling with this lighter- for God's sake, anything that will make the time go faster. It didn't take nearly as long for Misha to finish as Spike felt it did and the second Misha opened his eyes he saw his companion gesture for him to leave the room stealthily.  
  
As soon as they closed the door and made their way back to the living room, Misha collapsed on the couch.  
  
"What did you find?"  
  
A pause. "The same old stuff- middle class family, normal childhood, issues with asshole boyfriends, issues with the world. She doesn't seem to like herself much- doesn't seem to like anybody. She wasn't a cheerleader and she was sort of bitter about that but all in all she's just like a million other girls her age. There was a bit about her going to a mental institution for a while and I guess she's not too happy about that. I think she's sort of 'touched'. There are places in her head that she doesn't let herself go- those that are completely cut off. I guess she just stuffs everything in there, hoping that it'll go away."  
  
He breathed deeply for a while, then he continued.  
  
"She had some sort of nervous breakdown when she had these hallucinations a year or two ago. Maybe that was her psychic ability manifesting itself, in not a very nice way."  
  
Spike seemed surprised at this. "The girl's psychic?"  
  
Misha snorted. "In a very loose sense of the word. She has some ability but she doesn't know what to do with it. Doesn't know where it's coming from and she doesn't even know it's there. I had to prod a lot- poke into those dark corners to see those things, but I came up against a lot of resistance. It's a bit of a fluke, really. How she was able to see this" he pointed to the middle of his forehead, which looked like the middle of his forehead to Spike. But then Spike wasn't *psychic*… It wasn't like he cared.  
  
He pondered this for a while, but it didn't really seem to fit with what he had expected. Why the hell were Wolfram and Hart so willing to pounce on some girl who wasn't even a *good* psychic? It made no sense.  
  
It was then that he realized that he needed to get to the bottom of this mess by talking to Buffy and her contacts. Maybe they would know something.  
  
"Is there anything else you need?" Misha asked as he was gathering up his bag and his carrier case of kittens. "I'm going to leave these files with you in case you need them."  
  
He took some papers out of his case and left them on the table.  
  
"No. Just call me in case anything comes up."  
  
He walked him to the door and greeted him goodnight.  
  
As soon as Spike was sure that the hybrid was out of earshot he dug his cellphone out of his duster pocket. He dialed a number and listened to six rings on the other line before a groggy voice finally picked up.  
  
"Slayer, it's me. We need to talk."  
  
TBC 


End file.
